Ranking EVERY WWE Champion From Worst To Best
5. Roman Reigns
Numbers rarely lie in professional wrestling, and some pretty big ones back up Roman Reigns' near-four year run as WWE/Universal Champion.
The 1,316 days that separate his September 2020 victory over The Fiend and April 2024 loss to Cody Rhodes were some of the most seismic in WWE history. His mere return shook the cobwebs from a truly abysmal pandemic period for the company, with Reigns elevating his own status as a true leader just by walking away when lockdown orders were first issued. At WrestleMania 37 and 38 in 2021 and 2022 respectively, there was nobody else even remotely close 'The Tribal Chief', as evidenced by emphatic wins over Edge, Daniel Bryan and Brock Lesnar that consolidated Roman's power and the company's top titles across another dominant 12 months.
Business was beginning to boom again for WWE in 2022, and never was that more apparent than during a summer series of ratings-gobbling Bloodline segments that made good on the deeper relationship between Reigns and The Usos and new secret ingredient Sami Zayn. Millions tuned in, millions more caught up online. In the meantime, 'The Tribal Chief' perfected his epic main event formula in such a way that every appearance he made and match he worked carried its own value above almost everything on the show.
Almost everything, because the longer Cody Rhodes didn't win the WWE Championship, the more undeniable he became. Reigns had realistically been supplanted by the Champion elect before he'd lost the title, but losing needed to happen all the same. An epic WrestleMania XL finale saw legends and contemporary stars alike combine just to bring Roman's empire to its knees for the first time. The company had never ever been bigger, and one man stood aloft it for the entire duration of the rise.